


Purpose

by chantefable



Category: Frontier Wolf - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Gen, Omens & Portents, Trick or Treat: Trick, Widowed, Women In Power
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-07 03:42:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16400675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chantefable/pseuds/chantefable
Summary: The present day is bleak, for Shula has lost a husband, and the tribe has lost a chieftain.One of these things has to be remedied with urgency if the sun is to shine upon the Votadini.





	Purpose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mrs_timmings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrs_timmings/gifts).



“Shula!”

She turned and raised her hand in greeting, immediately bringing frost-bitten fingers to her forehead to shield her gaze from harsh sunlight and make out the speaker's face. A wide-shouldered man met her eyes, and Shula took in his stained, weary face and bandaged forearm before focusing on his hands, for he was pulling on one end of a large, wide cloak. Teleri was behind him, holding up another end, and although her hair was loose and hanging in moist crimson strands in her face, heavy from the mizzle, Shula could see the frown between her brows and the way her lips were tight and white with effort. Teleri's red-haired older brother was carrying the third end, and for a moment, with the light catching on his locks and his flushed skin just so, he looked so much like Connla that Shula's heart hurt. The fourth man, the one closest to her, was Morvidd, and that was what made Shula understand. For Morvidd would not have stooped to something far beneath his station, to becoming akin to a beast of burden even for a little while, unless – 

“We brought the body.”

Shula nodded and pulled the wool wrap tighter around her shoulders. She had felt hot all day despite the biting cold of the air; she had been out and about, busy with a thousand little tasks and making sure everything was in order, well-prepared and taken care of, and never allowing herself a free moment to think. Now, the reality slammed into her full force, leaving her short of breath and chilled to the marrow. There, on a stretched piece of cloth, lay Cunorix.

He looked just like every other dead man she had seen.

The four of them stood still and silent as Shula watched her fill of her husband's pallid face and the large russet-red smear of dried blood around the fatal wound. As solemn as pallbearers on a formal burial ceremony that befit the chieftain of the tribe, they lowered Cunorix down on the ground. Teleri stepped into her brother's embrace while Morvidd remained rooted to the spot, features sharpened into an expression of bereft emptiness. As if he had lost his own son, Shula thought. He had lost a son of Ferradach Dhu, he had lost both of them, and he never had another child who might lay claim to his love. And now, Cunorix was gone, Connla was gone, Ferradach Dhu was gone…

All of them less than shadows, all of them nothing but Shula's ghosts tethered by her memory forevermore.

A sharp tremor seized Shula's hands and she dug her fingers into her own forearms, hoping for the pain to ground her. She looked back at the man who had addressed her and was now waiting somberly, with keen attention and deference. She was surprised that she could not even remember his name.

Her feet were heavy as she took small steps towards what remained of her husband, and a deep ache settled beneath her breastbone when Shula slowly bent down and ran her fingers down his sallow cheek. The world narrowed down to her hand, red and swollen from the cold, stark against the dead colour of Cunorix's skin. 

And then, she slid her open palm to his neck and pried the soft gold of the slim torc open, pulling it apart. A movement at her left shoulder – Morvidd bowing down to help her raise Cunorix's head, the dead body only barely pliant – and the torc was free, looking almost alive in milky white daylight, like sunshine sluicing through Shula's hands.

She looked down at her husband once more and allowed herself to _see_ that he was gone.

Everything that had been – their plans, their hopes, their arrangement, the war-path and the way the Votadini had lived – was gone.

She put the torc around her own neck without ceremony, and caught relief and determination flit across the faces of those around her: Morvidd; the man whose name she still could not remember, now joined by several shield-brothers and shield-maidens; Teleri and her brother with a gaggle of children clinging closer and holding onto the hems of their clothing... 

Time shifted and realigned; like fall follows summer, and winter follows fall, death had come after life, and now a new rule had to come after the old one. Indeed, it was an ordinary day, a day like any other: the sun shone just the same, and the winds blew as before. Shula's life purpose was gone, pierced and bled to death by the iron of the war-god; she could see a new one, she was sure of it.

She ordered Teleri to take care of the body before taking old Morvidd by the hand and calling for an urgent council meeting.

Far off, beyond the fog and the war, she glimpsed a future for them all, and wished to live to see it for herself.


End file.
